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Mikey Cook

Initiated from the ongoing theft of numerous Moore & Hepworth bronzes from their public settings to be melted down and sold for remanufacture as brass electrical components, this new body of work explores unsolicited reappropriation and gross decontextualisation for the generation of new artworks as a recurring theme throughout history. Included within the installation are several carved stone pieces, taking reference from the over-saturation of 3D rendered hyper-modernist painterly gestures seen in the influx of ‘post-net’ artworks which proliferate virtual blogging platforms and magazines, created entirely from materials stolen by the artist. The reification of these virtual gestures in a traditional sculptural material, crudely executed using basic digital drawing programs before being carved from solid granite, rearranges conventional ontological systems established in consensus art history: a synthesis from a purely conceptual and dimensionless user adjusted reality into another with fixed parameters concerning space, weight and form.